


Christmases

by Caladenia



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Christmas, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-14
Updated: 2019-12-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 00:07:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21787969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caladenia/pseuds/Caladenia
Summary: Kathryn Janeway spent seven Christmases on Voyager, most of them she would prefer to forget. Then she’s back on Earth, and nothing appears to have changed.
Relationships: Chakotay/Kathryn Janeway
Comments: 25
Kudos: 83
Collections: 25 Days of Voyager (2019)





	Christmases

**Author's Note:**

> My thanks to BlackVelvet42 for the beta! May she have a fluffy, snowy, white Christmas, while I swelter down under.

* * *

**_Christmas 2371_ **

Her first Christmas in the Delta quadrant is the best Kathryn could have ever hoped for. _Voyager_ has left the 37s planet with its full crew complement on board, and she's so thankful for their loyalty and faith they will make it home.

She’d given her crew an hour to decide on whether to stay on that planet which felt so much like home, or come back to _Voyager_ to continue their very long journey to the Alpha quadrant. She knew many of them had already thought about staying. As much as a third of the crew, she’d heard. Perhaps more. During that hour, she’d prepared herself for the hard task of operating the ship with less than a hundred people. It would have been hell, with long shifts and no strength or time left to seek out new worlds and explore space. Just the daily grind of keeping the ship moving at all costs.

Her heart misses a few beats when the doors of the cargo bay open, and nobody is there waiting to disembark. Her fears dissipate, and she can’t think of a better Christmas gift than that big space empty of people.

She goes to the holodeck party that Tom has organised. Sandrine’s walls are decked in fancy decorations, and everybody is in a festive mood. When twenty-three hundred hours chimes, Kathryn goes back to her quarters, leaving many of the crew still happily celebrating. She’s thoroughly enjoyed herself, but her drawn-out presence would only curb their merrymaking with their friends.

Before going to sleep, she sits on her bed, holding a photo of Mark and her smiling at the holocamera with her beloved Irish setter sitting between them. She brushes her fiancé’s face on the photo with her fingers. It’s been six months since _Voyager_ disappeared in a Badlands plasma storm with all hands, and he must think her dead by now. She hopes he’ll be with loved ones to cheer him up over the Christmas period, because she knows it’s not the same without family around.

Putting the photo back on the bedtable, she slips under the bedsheets. She can still feel the weight and warmth of Chakotay’s hand on her shoulder when she was waiting in the corridor for the cargo bay door to open, and smiles to herself at his unconditional support. She could have done worse than make this solid and earnest man her first officer.

⁂

**_Christmas 2372_ **

Her second Christmas is the worst. She should be glad to be back on _Voyager_ after spending three months on New Earth, but something, somebody rather, is missing.

Since their return on board the ship from New Earth, she can’t shake the thought she’s making a grave mistake by insisting Chakotay and her go back to being the professional command team they were before. A few weeks down the track and the captain has won. She’s resigned herself to the fact that whatever hopes and wishes she had for a new life—a life without responsibilities, without a uniform, and with the love of a good man at her side—should be well and truly left in the past and best disregarded all together.

As the festive season approaches, deep sadness overcomes her, nevertheless. Although the planet they’d been stranded on did not have a neat twelve-month orbit around its star, she’d calculated that their first ever Christmas on New Earth would fall straight bang in the middle of winter. A small miracle indeed. She’d looked forward to introducing Chakotay to how the Janeway clan celebrates the occasion, even if she was the only representative of her family for tens of thousand of light-years.

She makes little ornaments to decorate the shelter when he is busy outside, and thinks of a present for him. Nothing flash of course, but not anything overly practical either. Her mother had always insisted that Christmas and birthday presents should be about surprises and wishes, rather than needs. What does Chakotay, former Maquis, former first officer, would wish for as he cooks and builds her a deep bathtub and a bed headrest? He seems so contended, so at peace, that she is at a loss to think of anything.

Her quandary disappears when they get rescued much too soon. The baubles she’d crafted now lay abandoned on the surface of a far distant planet, all but forgotten.

Tom and Harry invite her to _Voyager_ ’s second holodeck Christmas Eve party at Sandrine, but she can’t bring herself to stay. She leaves early and spends the evening reading in her quarters until midnight has come and gone, and she falls asleep on the couch.

She dreams of egg nogs, falling snow, and dark brown eyes smiling at her.

⁂

**_Christmas 2373_ **

She can’t honestly recollect much of her third Christmas on _Voyager_. She goes to Neelix’ holo-resort programme, which doesn’t look like a Christmas festivity at all. As much as she’s enjoyed it before, this time the garish theme feels out of place.

Although she avoids the punch, the headache that has been gnawing at her temples flares again, and she leaves the holodeck after only a few minutes. She’s been on edge ever since the rumours of a vast territory controlled by the Borg and laying across _Voyager_ ’s path have come to her attention. She’d like to discuss her thoughts with Chakotay, but he’s elected to stay on the bridge for the evening shift. He still feels responsible for Seska’s mutiny scenario which could have seen the ship destroyed.

She does trust him; he knows that; she’s told him many times. They’ve been through too much together. She can’t see any scenario, any situation, which will shake their command bond. They will need that unshakeable belief in each other when they face the Borg.

As she walks down the empty corridors, she thinks that some Christmases are not worth remembering. There’ll be many more to come, and they will soon all merge into one another. The only differences will be in the holoimages of the crew taken against the decorated walls—the wrinkles deepening as decades pass, Naomi getting taller and crewmen whose happy faces will be missing the following year.

Back in her quarters, she spends Christmas Day studying Starfleet records on the Borg. They soon face their nemesis, and the command team’s trust in each other is sorely tested for the first time in three years.

⁂

**_Christmas 2374_ **

She doesn’t even know Christmas is near until Chakotay tells her about the crew saving their rations for the occasion, and Neelix is doing something or another in the mess hall, and it will be good for morale to see her there, a morale which is already starting to fray since they've entered the void.

All she wants is for Chakotay to leave her alone.

But she smiles instead, nods her approval and reassures him that, yes, she’ll come to the celebration, while she’s dying inside, and parties and good cheers are the furthest things from her mind.

How can he ask her to be merry when there’s only darkness around? She is so sorry, so spent, so…

It was less than a month ago that she thought they could make it home just in time to share Christmas with their families, only to hurtle towards Borg space on board a ship that masqueraded as an advanced Starfleet ship. Between Arturis, Species 8472, the Borg, and the Hirogens, it's been two steps backwards for every step closer to home this year. They’ve lost people and trust, and forged an alliance with the devil against an even worse evil. She brought a Borg on board early in the year, only to fall twelve months later for a victim of her very same nemesis, seeking revenge for her decision to help them.

Fancy that.

She doesn’t go to the Christmas party. She stays in her quarters, looking into the night outside.

⁂

**_Christmas 2375_ **

She doesn’t want to know about Christmas. A couple of weeks after the disaster that was the Equinox, and she’s still thoroughly disgusted with herself. Normally, she would ruminate for a few days and then go on with whatever needs to be done, but not this time. This time, she crossed the line, as Chakotay put it, and frankly she can’t wait for the year to end, as if that would somehow miraculously erase the whole shameful event from her memory.

She avoids the festive holodeck programmes and cancels going to Neelix’ fifth Christmas celebration he's organised in the mess hall.

Five years already, and only thirty-something to go.

She puts her name down for a repair job in the bowels of the ship instead. A day spent testing the tractor beam subsystems on deck fourteen should keep her mind busy.

⁂

**_Christmas 2376_ **

Three weeks into January 2377, she’s still feeling the pain from the Borg implants. She tries to distract herself by reading her personal logs and realises she can’t find an entry about Christmas day.

The date has no meaning anymore. She wonders how many of the crew harbour the same thought, or if it’s just her.

⁂

**_Christmas 2377_ **

Her concentration falters as she listens to the debriefing panel. She’s not managed to get home yet, having missed Christmas by a few days while playing cat and mouse with the Borg armada. Her first New Year on Earth was spent at Starfleet headquarters, discussing the former Maquis’ crew evaluations with Recruitment. No way was she going to let their careers dictated by faceless bureaucrats who can’t even find the Delta quadrant on a map of the galaxy without help.

She sighs, stretches her neck, brings her attention back to the debriefing session. The three admirals sitting across her are going through _Voyager_ ’s records from the ship’s first year. At that pace, she’ll still be talking to them comes summer time.

She watches herself on the screen as they look at her logs from seven years ago. She looked so eager. So enthusiastic.

So young and naïve.

She can’t fathom how her older self captained the ship for another twenty-three long years. Maybe that’s one of the reasons she came back, to save her own self from the same endless journey.

As she sits in the debriefing room with nobody by her side, she can’t help thinking that some gifts seem hardly worthwhile.

⁂

**_Christmas 2378_ **

Everything feels wrong. The snow sprinkled on the garden outside, the fir tree reaching up to the ceiling, the ornaments fished out of boxes which have not seen the light of day in eight years, Phoebe tells her in a whisper.

She can't understand what’s eating her from the inside. Doesn’t know if she should laugh or cry. She'd look forward to her first Christmas Eve at home, the long evening dinner a family tradition dating from well before she was born. Even her father did his utmost to come home for the occasion from wherever his missions sent him. She’s been the one missing the best part of a decade of home-cooked festive fare, laughing around the table, and children and dogs running under everybody's feet.

Phoebe’s wife is pregnant again, her sister had announced proudly when she arrived at the doorstep, one husband, one expecting wife and two kids in tow, and Kathryn is happy for them all. Gretchen, stooped and frail, still bosses whoever is closest into helping set the table. There's also cousins and aunties, some of whom she hasn’t seen since she left for the academy. Cheerfulness abounds. Kids play and scream their delight. Even the dogs join in, pestering whoever feeds them under the table for one more treat.

They’re the family she so wanted to see again and celebrate with.

And yet, they suffocate her.

They make references to events she knows little about. Talk of people she vaguely recalls, names and deeds she’s forgotten about. Deaths, births and relationships which mean nothing to her. Once she’s politely answered their questions about _Voyager_ and her work at Starfleet, and returned their good wishes, she takes refuge on the veranda, a glass of chilled wine in her hands.

She’s bewildered at her lack of cheerfulness and gratitude, as if she’s lost any claim to be happy along with the seven years she spent in the Delta quadrant. She’s an outsider, a stranger in her own home.

Maybe it’s just the effect of a busy twelve months. She’s exhausted and unhappy, an admiral now, even is she still flinches when a former member of her crew calls her by that new title. It reminds her too much of the grey-haired woman who sacrificed herself almost a year ago to the day, so her younger self could be here, home.

A chill runs down her back. She’s forgotten the depth of Indiana’s winters, but she prefers the sapping cold and enjoys the few moments of solitude. Gretchen had given her a shrewd glance when she’d left the room and noise behind. She knows her escape won’t go unnoticed for long, and she will have to rejoin a family she can’t relate to anymore the way she used to.

The people she’s got to know, the ones with whom she shares more than blood ties, are now scattered over too many continents, planets and spaceships, never to come together again. She deeply regrets all those celebrations when she excused herself and disappeared into her own lonely world instead.

Tears threaten for the two families she’s lost. But it must be the wind, or maybe a snowflake. Admiral Janeway can’t cry. Not on her first Christmas spent home in a very long time.

Heavy footsteps sound from behind, the veranda floorboards creaking under the weight of the newcomer, before two steaming cups come to rest on the rail to her left.

No sign of a ring on his hand, she notices. The rumours she's never listened to were true after all.

“There’s brandy in your coffee. Your mother told me it’s a Janeway family custom.”

She still hasn’t turned around to face him, the cold freezing her on the spot.

“I was hoping you’d tell me more about all the strange traditions I’ll have to observe in the years to come.”

His hand moves up, and she knows without looking that he is pulling at the lobe of his ear.

“If I get invited back,” he adds.

The realisation that she’d recognised him just from his footsteps, from his strong hands, from a small gesture, rushes at her like a wave. She puts the wine glass down and takes the cup, brushing her fingers against his. A sip, and the brandy hits the back of her throat, making her cough. This time the tears do come, and his arm brings her closer, gently wrapping a shawl around her shoulders.

“I haven’t got a present for you,” she sniffles, leaning against him. He smells of pine and warmth and family.

“I’ve got you,” he whispers in her hair. “That’s all I’ve ever needed.”

There’s no mistletoe under the roof of the veranda, but they kiss anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> To write this fic, I had to find out when Christmas fell each year Voyager spent in the Delta quadrant and what the crew was doing around that date.  
> This extremely important research soon snowballed (pun!) into establishing a complete timeline of all Voyager episodes over the seven years of the series, arranged by calendar date. The files are available from [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21640147) if you are interested.


End file.
